


How We Become

by m_class



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Action, Backstory, Cadet years, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Choices, Gen, Identity, Injury, Of a character from a show that doesn't exist yet but I love her already so here we go, Rising through the ranks, Starfleet doesn't fire first, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 15:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10993959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: But Starfleet is nothing more than the composite whole of billions of fractional moments of becoming, and that means that it is nothing without them.Scenes from the becoming of Philippa Georgiou.





	How We Become

Pippa Georgiou is hiding in her blanket fort behind the sofa when she hears her mother come home from work. She holds her breath, putting a finger to her lips and looking sternly at Captain Cat. He continues to sleep, following her order satisfactorily, if not knowingly.

“Pippa.” Her mother’s footsteps make their way into the kitchen. “Pippa!”

 _One, two, three…_ she makes it three seconds before voluntarily exiting the fort and padding sheepishly into the kitchen.

“Your teacher told me what happened today.”

“I didn’t do anything bad,” she mutters.

Her mother regards her with uncharacteristic sternness. “Philippa Cosima Georgiou, you _hit_ your classmate in the arm.”

“She tattled to the teacher and said I called her a sehlat!”

“Did you call her a sehlat?”

“No.” Pippa shuffles her feet. “I said she was _acting_ like a sehlat.”

“Pippa…”

“She _was!_ She trampled my blocks and she wasn’t even looking where she was going, and she didn’t say sorry!”

“So you...in some wayaccused her of sehlat-like behavior,” her mother says, lips quirking slightly despite her stern expression. “And she told the teacher--”

“He said _I_ had to have a time out for name-calling, but _she_ only had to say _sorry_ for trampling my blocks! It wasn’t _fair_ \--”

“And then you smacked her arm.”

“You taught me to hit people,” she mumbles, scowling at the floor.

“Baby girl.” Her mother squats down to Pippa’s level, looking her right in the eye. “We taught you to how to stay safe and escape if someone bigger or stronger tries to hurt you. What did we say? _We only use this for bad and scary situations._ We don’t ever, _ever_ hurt people except to defend ourselves.”

She starts to sniffle at the chastisement. “I had to!”

“Pippa, listen to me. Even when you’re upset, you need to do the right thing. That’s how you become a good person.”

Pippa sniffles harder, and with a sigh, her mother embraces her before extracting a solemn promise about using one’s words.

For the rest of her life, Philippa Georgiou will retain the memory of that afternoon. A childish action and a gentle scolding are hardly significant; what will stick in her mind is the realization she began to form later, mulling over the events of the day back in her fort while arranging a circle of stuffed animals around Captain Cat.

 _I didn’t_ have _to do that. I had a choice._

* * *

Philippa Georgiou is sitting at her desk in the living room when her father walks in.

“Pippa?”

She swivels her chair around, looking up at him.

“Are you working on your applications?”

“Uh-huh.”

He stands for another moment, then lowers himself onto the end of the couch, clearing his throat awkwardly. “So. Are you still considering applying to Starfleet?”

“Dad. I told you. I’m _only_ applying to Starfleet. If I don’t get into the Academy, I’ll probably be placed in a civilian-track assignment at an affiliated research center. And if I don’t get that, I’ll study for a few more years and apply again. They say if you’re determined, you’re certain to get some sort of role ev--”

He clears his throat. "If you do apply, I’m sure you’ll be accepted.”

Though the words are reassuring, his expression is not. She stares at him, pinching her lips together.

“Did you look at the brochures I sent?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Did you see anything you might be interested in?” he asks, with a kind of driven cheerfulness.

“Dad, I don’t want to join a civilian exploration organization. I want to join Starfleet.”

His words are laced with the frustration of being pulled out of his hopeful reality and into hers. “However the media might try to present it to us, Starfleet isn’t just our official exploratory organization. It’s not some, some innocuous default option for adventurous kids like you. It’s the military. You’d have to follow orders, give orders. You can’t think for yourself. What if someone gives you an order you can’t follow? What if you’re away when someone you love gets sick? They won’t ship you back just because you want to come home. What if you lose interest in whatever they have you doing? I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to choose a path that takes away your freedom of choice.”

Philippa swallows, both at the pain of the argument and the second-hand embarrassment of having to confront a father so doggedly refusing to acknowledge the reality of his near-adult daughter’s decision. “Dad, I’ve told you why I want to join Starfleet. I want to explore places that haven’t been made safe for civilian surveys yet. I want to see the unknown, the really _really_ unknown. And--” she twists her hands in her lap. “I want to _help_ people. Because I think I can.”

“You can help people anywhere, Pip,” he says, voice pleading. “I don’t want to see you give up your own life, your choices--”

“ _No_ .” Philippa squeezes her eyes shut. “No, Dad, listen. If I...if I join Starfleet, I’m _part_ of Starfleet. I know I’ll have to follow a lot of orders at first, but I won’t be less Starfleet than anyone else.” She pauses, swallowing back tears. “Dad, you and Mom raised me to...to be good, to _care_. And now I, I do care about...everyone. Us. Earth. The Federation. I want us to keep choosing to do the right thing. Dad, I want to explore, and I want to help. I want my choices to be about more than just me. I want to be part of something bigger.”

Her father gives her a long look, and she can see the love in his eyes alongside the frustration. “I just don’t understand why you want this.” His voice is soft, defeated, and she realizes that he is telling her the heart of the truth. “You’re certain?”

“Yes,” she tells him. “This is my choice.”

* * *

Cadet Philippa Georgiou is sitting on the middle lefthand side of the fifth row of the lecture hall. The first few rows are crowded with cadets eager to show that they’re not trying to hide, and the back of the room is littered with those that actually are. Philippa has never felt particularly compelled to be either; anyone can sit in the front of a lecture hall, and she can see perfectly well from here.

Admiral Letov is silent as she hangs up her bag and cloak, wrinkled face even more serious than usual. Instead of clicking on the presentation screen, she leans against the front of the podium and folds her arms.

“Cadets. Most of you will graduate two months from now. And,” she says, gazing somberly around the room, “it’s time for us to talk.”

It is only after waiting until she has each and every student’s complete attention that Letov begins.

“Starfleet is not an adventure.”

She stares around the room, letting her words sink in.

“Starfleet is not a casual choice.”

Another long pause.

“In fact, Starfleet _is_ not anything. Starfleet _becomes_ whatever it will be anew each moment, and it becomes what it will be through each of you.”

Philippa watches silently, as does every other cadet in the hall. The admiral always commands a respectful silence when lecturing, but today, you could hear a pin drop.

“Starfleet’s values are laudable enough. Exploration. Compassion. Diversity. Unity. But what most of you cannot yet fully understand, simply because you have not yet lived it, is that your life in Starfleet will be composed not of static values, but a series of choices.

“When your superior officer gives an order, will you follow it? You will face consequences if you don’t, perhaps be court-martialled, but you will always have that choice. You’ve been sent on an away mission; as you approach a crevice in a cliff, a tentacle pokes out. Do you step closer, do you wait, do you draw your phaser, do you run? You will have to make a choice. You have been assigned to a space station, and one of your crewmates keeps turning up where they should not be. Do you talk to them? Report them? You will have to make a choice.”

Letov’s words are punctuated by the rhythm of her steps as she paces across the front of the hall and back. “Each of those choices will define you. And no amount of experience, no promotion, no accolade you can achieve will protect you from the next moment of choice.

“When you walk across that stage at graduation, when you accept your first mission orders, you are choosing a life on a high wire. You are choosing a life of risk--and hope and wonder, too. You are choosing a career that is both a gift to you from your interplanetary community, and a sacrifice made by you for them.

“So think about why you are choosing this path. Think about who you are, and who you wish to become. Because walking onto that stage isn’t even close to the most important choice you will make in Starfleet. It is merely the first.”

* * *

Commander Philippa Georgiou is still in the science department, dishevelled strands of hair clinging to her sweaty face, when Captain Macarro announces again, “All hands, brace for impact,” as though everyone isn’t already bracing themselves as well as they can against the ship’s constant bucking.

Holding tightly to the sides of the jerry-rigged sensor console, she looks back and forth between the displays of radiation levels and the small, blurry viewscreen that shows what is physically occurring.

The lifeforms glow a sickening purple when they are near the warp field, then vanish. They aren’t changing colors anywhere else in the anomaly.

She zooms in as another group approaches the field, catching her breath at what the closer view reveals. After they flare, the creatures aren’t vanishing--their bodies are simply losing their light and shriveling into nothing.

She stabs at the nearest communicator. “Georgiou to Macarro.”

“What is it, Commander?”

“I’m looking at these readings, and...I think our warp field is killing the lifeforms.” She stares at the screen again, watching as a dozen more beings flare purple and wither. “I think they’re dying.”

The ship shudders again. “That’s not what our earlier readings suggested.”

“The readings from earlier didn’t even suggest the ‘rocks’ were alive. They’re releasing massive amounts of polydimethylsiloxane as they hit the warp field, and the levels are rising throughout the population. That could indicate a stress response, and if it is, we might be seeing more guests show up until they figure out a way to neutralize us for good.” She takes a deep breath, wiping the sweat from her eyes. “Captain, advise shutting main power and coasting out of the anomaly.”

Macarro’s voice is grave. “If you’re wrong, the epsilon radiation will tear this ship apart.”

“Yes, sir. But we need to stop killing them,” she replies quietly. “And if we do--maybe they’ll let us go.”

There is a second’s pause, and the captain is giving the order. Georgiou can feel the anomaly field encroaching on the ship, a humming in her head and an ache in her teeth.

The science department is the only part of the ship connected to the jerry-rigged external sensors, the only reason she is here in the first place rather than at her captain’s right shoulder, so she clings to the console, manually sending the precious data to the bridge, as the ship shakes harder and Macarro grimly orders all nonessential personnel to assume crash positions. She is still at the console when the captain’s voice crackles back through several long minutes later, confirming that the lifeforms will remain unharmed as long as the ship keeps main power offline to coast back through the barrier, but that it will make for a bumpy ride. She is still at the console when the systems around her begin to hiss and spit sparks, and she is still at the console when it explodes.

She is held suspended until she can be transported to Starfleet Medical. After surgery, she spends days drifting in and out of sleep, the vision in her left eye blurred, faces swimming above her--her parents, her half-brother, her friends in the service and her friends from home.

When she fully wakes, her skin and hair have been regenerated, and the sight in her left eye is clearer, but still indistinct. She will later learn that the impairment is permanent.

Admiral Jemutai is sitting by her bed.

“Admiral,” she croaks, and he hands her a glass of water.

“Sorry to drop in on you mid-recovery, Commander. But they said you were well enough for visitors. That was quite the save you brought about--of the lifeforms, and of your colleagues. I’ve just come from the final debriefing, and thought I would stop by and give you the news.”

“Sir?” she asks, and he smiles.

“Congratulations, Captain.”

* * *

Captain Philippa Georgiou is sitting in her command chair when the Klingons surround her ship on the edge of Federation space, accusing them of--what? Peculation? Defamation? When she tries to clarify the allegations, there is no response from the enemy ships but to cut communication, weapons locking onto her ship and its precious, terrifying cargo.

Commander Burnham must be thinking of the same thing, because she says sharply, “We have to engage. We don’t have a choice.”

“Starfleet doesn’t fire first.”

“We have to!”

But there is always a choice, and the more choices pile up over the course of a lifetime, the more you realize that the question of what you become is really the question of how you become it. Burnham wants to choose to physically protect their crew, and to complete the mission, just as Georgiou has chosen, fiercely, whenever she could. But Starfleet is nothing more than the composite whole of billions of fractional moments of becoming, and that means that it is nothing without them. Every decision made by a single person, from Earth to Vulcan to the edge of the Federation, defines Starfleet, and thus each decision has the potential to be its unbecoming.

Hope and love define Starfleet, and hope and love define her first officer, and Georgiou trusts that someday, Michael will understand that she is also defined by Georgiou’s choices as long as she serves willingly under her command.

And Captain Georgiou will not allow her first officer, or her crew, or the organization that created her and that she co-creates with every moment, to be unbecome.

“Keep targets locked. Hold your fire.”

 


End file.
